performance art

Taylor Mac is a playwright, actor, singer-songwriter, performance artist, director and producer who is currently creating a 24-hour durational concert called, “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music.”

6 hours of the project, representing the six decades between 1836 and 1896, will be performed at MASS MoCA in North Adams Massachusetts this Saturday, April 9th from 4 to 10pm. Audience members are encouraged to come and going during the performance.

Taylor Mac was recently name-checked in a New York Magazine article about why New York Theater is thriving and The New York Times said “Fabulousness can come in many forms, and Taylor Mac seems intent on assuming each and every one of them.”

The “fourth wall” is the imaginary barrier that separates the actors from the audience in a traditional theater production. When it’s broken, the audience is shocked into an awareness of the role they play in supporting the spectacle at hand.

In British artist Ant Hampton’s new production, The Extra People, the fourth wall is so thin as to be nearly imperceptible, with the line between performer and audience equally unclear. The Extra People was commissioned by EMPAC and will premiere in the space where it was developed via the artist-in-residence program.

The piece will begin at 7 pm tomorrow and cycle on the half hour until 10 pm. Ant Hampton joins us to tell us more.

Looking at Lemon: Transforming Life through Literature is a series of events focusing on the life and work of Lemon Andersen, a writer, performance artist, screen actor and Tony Award-winning poet.

Andersen is also a three-time felon who grew up in Brooklyn, the child of heroin addicted parents who died of AIDS before he was fifteen leaving Lemon an orphaned teenager fending for himself. A high school drop-out who spent years in jail and on probation, his attempts at rehabilitation faltered until he attended a poetry reading and found a sense of purpose in the art of words.

The series celebrates Lemon’s ability to find meaning in his life, discover healing in creative work and transform pain into art. He joins us in Studio A to tell us about his life and work. Also joining us, Kim Engel Assistant Director of the UAlbany Performing Arts Center.

Half Straddle is a New York City-based theater company that makes plays, performances, videos and music written and directed by Tina Satter. This Saturday they will perform their new work Seagull (Thinking of you) at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA.